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. As this can hardly be an accidental coincidence, the woolly
covering of the foetus probably represents the first permanent coat of
hair in those mammals which are born hairy. Three or four cases have
been recorded of persons born with their whole bodies and faces
thickly covered with fine long hairs; and this strange condition is
strongly inherited, and is correlated with an abnormal condition of
the teeth.*(2) Prof. Alex. Brandt informs me that he has compared
the hair from the face of a man thus characterised, aged
thirty-five, with the lanugo of a foetus, and finds it quite similar
in texture; therefore, as he remarks, the case may be attributed to an
arrest of development in the hair, together with its continued growth.
Many delicate children, as I have been assured by a surgeon to a
hospital for children, have their backs covered by rather long silky
hairs; and such cases probably come under the same head.
* Eschricht, ibid., ss. 40, 47.
*(2) See my Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,
vol. ii., p. 327. Prof. Alex. Brandt has recently sent me an
additional case of a father and son, born in Russia, with these
peculiarities. I have received drawings of both from Paris.
It appears as if the posterior molar or wisdom-teeth were tending to
become rudimentary in the more civilised races of man. These teeth are
rather smaller than the other molars, as is likewise the case with the
corresponding teeth in the chimpanzee and orang; and they have only
two separate fangs
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